The Afterlife Is Letting Go

"The Afterlife Is Letting Go is a meditative consideration of Japanese American incarceration during WWII by Brandon Shimoda, author of the PEN Open Book Award-winning The Grave on the Wall."--Matt Seidel, Publishers Weekly's "Big Indie Books of Fall 2024""Both personal and choral, The Afterlife is Letting Go is deeply felt, precise, and as generous in its insights as it is unsparing in its critiques of how 'exclusion zones' proliferate and reach across time and space. A stirring, trenchant, and necessary work."--Christina Sharpe, author of Ordinary NotesIn a series of reflective, multi-layered, sometimes multi-voiced essays, poet Brandon Shimoda explores the "afterlife" of the U.S. government's forced removal and mass incarceration of Japanese immigrants and Japanese Americans during WWII, excavating the ways these events continue to resonate today. What emerges is a panoramic, yet intimate portrait of intergenerational trauma and healing.Informed by personal/familial history, years o